New theory on the origin of the coronavirus rejects the fact that it came from the Wuhan market

The origin of the Covid-19 pandemic remains uncertain, just over a year after the first outbreak in the city of Wuhan, China. Although the most accepted theory is that of bat cells, sold in the local market, the journalist and writer Nicolas wade sought to clarify the principle of SARS-CoV-2 and it was based on the creation of the virus in a Chinese laboratory.

In a long article, he attempted to find the start of the global pandemic through information gathered from scientific articles, which contain clues as to what happened and offer readers to make their own judgments about what happened. subject. Next, I will try to assess the complex issue of guilt, which begins with the Chinese government, but goes much further.

There are currently two theories about the origin of the virus causing the pandemic, officially known as SARS-CoV-2: one is that it is naturally derived from wildlife and has reached people through bats, while another is that the virus has was created in a laboratory and escaped.

Wade attempts to explain both theories and offers arguments to determine which one is more plausible. The author warns that both lack sufficient evidence to be empirically verified, so it only has clues to clarify them.

Wuhan market theory

When the pandemic began in December 2019, Chinese authorities reported that the beginning indicated the consumption of wet food sold in the Wuhan market, a place that sells wild animals for food. The market epidemic led to the SARS1 epidemic in 2002 and the MERS epidemic in 2012, in which a virus was transmitted from an intermediate animal to humans.

As Wade explains, theDecoding of the coronavirus genome showed that it belonged to a viral family known as beta-coronavirus, to which the SARS1 and MERS viruses also belong. This relationship supported the theory that it was a natural virus that had emerged from bats and transmitted to humans. However, the link between the wet market, the main point of similarity with the SARS1 and MERS epidemics, was not as linear as it seemed.

Chinese scientists have found earlier cases in Wuhan unrelated to the wet market, but thThe journalist warns that the conclusions were hasty in an attempt to prove an origin in the face of the global emergency.

In this context does Nicholas Wade says Wuhan Institute of Virology is also operating in the Chinese city, a leading global center in coronavirus research, and it is for this reason that the possibility that the SARS2 virus may have escaped the lab cannot be ruled out.

The writer attributes this uncertainty to “public and media perceptions”, which were guided by the emergence of the virus in the Wuhan wet market, based on the postulates of two scientific groups. In addition, remember that in February 2020, a group of virologists condemned by a publication in The Lancet magazine “conspiracy theories which suggest that COVID-19 is not of natural origin”.

Wade says the idea that the virus could have escaped a lab invoked an accident, not a conspiracy, and therefore should have been considered, not considered.

Coronavirus leak from a laboratory

Nicholas Wade said this exhortation published in The Lancet was curated and written by Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York, which funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“If the SARS2 virus had escaped the research it funded, Daszak would be potentially guilty“, Said the writer in his text in which he also tried to explore the guilt of the origin of Covid-19.

Wuhan lab rejects accusations: “There is no way the virus left here”

The journalist points out that for 20 years, They “played a dangerous game” in their labs, by regularly creating viruses “more dangerous than those which exist in nature”. While they claimed they were doing it safely, Wade raises suspicions about a SARS-CoV-2 spill by settling into a host animal.

“If SARS2 had escaped such a laboratory experiment, one would expect a savage setback and the storm of public outrage would hit virologists everywhere, not just in China.“Growled Wade.

The author also cites a second statement published in the magazine Nature medicine which had a “huge influence” on shaping public attitudes: “Our analyzes clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a deliberately manipulated virus.»State five virologists in the second paragraph of their letter.

For Wade, this statement “was another case of bad science” because newer methods, called “no-see-um” or “no-crack” approaches, do not leave definitive marks, as others do. methods of virus manipulation, such as passage, which is the repeated transfer of virus from one cell culture to another. “If a virus has been tampered with, either transparently or serially, there is no way to know this is the case. Andersen and his colleagues assured their readers something they couldn’t know“, insists the writer.

According to the text, this theory is “unverifiable“because it cannot be conclusive because the SARS2 spike protein binds very well to its target, the human ACE2 receptor, but it does so in a different way that physical calculations suggest would be the best option Therefore, the virus must have arisen by natural selection, not manipulation.

Wade’s explanation for this argument is that the authors’ basic assumption is that anyone who attempts to bind a bat virus to human cells can only do so in one way. First, they would calculate the strongest possible fit between the human ACE2 receptor and the spike protein with which the virus binds to it. They would then design the protein peak accordingly (selecting the correct chain of amino acid units to make it up). Since the SARS2 spike protein is not of this design the best calculated, according to Andersen’s article, it therefore cannot have been adulterated.

Wade points out that this theory ignores how virologists get the spike proteins to bind to chosen targets, which is not computational, but splicing genes from spike proteins of other viruses or by serial passage.

With serial passage, each time the viral protein is transferred to new cell cultures or animals, the more successful ones are selected until one emerges that creates a very close bond with human cells. Natural selection has done all the heavy lifting.

Additionally, Wade refers to an even more elaborate second argument from the authors against tampering: Unlike DNA that humans use as hereditary material, various viruses use RNA, the close chemical cousin of DNA. But RNA is difficult to manipulate, so Researchers working with coronaviruses, which are based on RNA, will first convert the genome from RNA to DNA. They manipulate the version of DNA, either by adding or changing genes, and then turn the genome of the manipulated DNA back into infectious RNA.

For the author this conclusion, based only on two inconclusive speculations, convinced the world press that SARS2 could not escape from a laboratory.

Doubts about the natural emergency

The natural emergency was the media’s favorite theory until around February 2021 and a World Health Organization (WHO) commission visit to China.

WHO in Wuhan: they see “difficult” that the coronavirus has left the laboratory

The composition and access of the commission to the laboratory were tightly controlled by the Chinese authorities. Its members, including Daszak, said the lab leak was extremely unlikely, although they had no evidence to offer the commission otherwise.

“It was surprising because the SARS1 virus and MERS had left abundant traces in the environment,” describes Wade, explaining that the intermediate host species of SARS1 was identified within four months of the outbreak of the epidemic and the host of the virus. nine months. However, around 15 months after the start of the SARS2 pandemic, Chinese researchers had failed to find the original bat population, the intermediate species to which SARS2 may have jumped, nor any serological evidence. that a Chinese population, including that of Wuhan, had never been exposed to the virus before December 2019.

The natural emergency was still a conjecture which, although initially plausible, had not gathered supporting evidence for over a year. Wade wonders: “Why would anyone want to create a new virus capable of causing a pandemic? “

Among the arguments he offers in response, he indicates that virologists have obtained the tools to manipulate the genes of a virus, arguing that they could anticipate a possible pandemic by exploring how close a given animal virus could be to make the jump to humans. And that warranted laboratory experiments to improve the ability of dangerous animal viruses to infect people, virologists said.

The SHC014-CoV / SARS1 virus is known as a chimera because its genome contains genetic material from two viral strains. If the SARS2 virus had been cooked in the laboratory, then its direct prototype would have been the chimera SHC014-CoV / SARS1, the potential danger of which concerned many observers and sparked intense debate.

CI / FL